Landslide: The Jack Hickey Story

By Bruce Stagg Flanker Press $19.95; 208 pages employed by Stagg.

Probably the most inappropriate is when the author describes how Jack, attempting to propose to his girlfriend, fumbles in his pocket for a wedding ring “like a kitten burying its dirt in loose earth.”

Does grammar or literary style matter in a book about such a raw subject? Yes, it does, probably even more than in a book about gardening or baseball.

When a woman who has lost four children is quoted as saying to her husband “You really miss not having a son,” and you know she probably said or meant “You really miss having a son,” the contradiction shatters the intimacy of the moment.

I lay the responsibility for many of the errors in this book at the feet of the publisher, who should have employed a professional editor to guide the author through the grammatical and emotional minefield of a subject as fragile and painful as that found in “Landslide.”

A careless attitude towards the written word does honour to no one.